Saturday, September 17, 2016

Commission: Halaster Blackcloak and Sangalor all Finished!

The commission of Halaster Blackcloak and Sangalor is now all done! I really enjoyed painting these guys, partly because I am a huge D&D nerd and partly because Illithids are my favorite D&D monster race. I did have a few issues with them, mainly in the details of Halaster, but for the most part I liked working with them.

It's a pretty well known fact in my gaming group that I am not a fan of resin. But these models didn't have many issues with small parts that would easily break off or with bubbles in the casting. The issues I had with Halaster stemmed from his hair and beard. They seemed to have a lot of flashing in between the strands of hair and it was a pain to clean up.

These models were painted up for one of the owners of the game shop that my board gaming group meets up at on the weekends. He asked that I follow the official color schemes pretty closely, but that he wanted them to end up in my style of painting. He also didn't care if the beholder in the set was painted, since the person he is gifting these to didn't care for the beholder mini.

Anyway. Lets get to the pretty painted models!


Halaster Blackcloack

Halaster was almost overly simple to paint, since he has one big tattered robe, bushy hair and a large beard. The staff also lacked a lot of detailing, since it's basically a wooden staff with a skull on top. He also has some tiny skulls decorating his waist and the string holding them on was kind of a pain to paint properly. Overall though I think he turned out well. 



Sangalor

Compared to Halaster, Sangalor was an absolute blast to paint. As I mentioned before, Illithids are my favorite D&D race and I couldn't wait to get to work on him. Also I somehow managed to paint his black upper body armor without it looking overly contrasty or too grey. Normally black is the bane of my existence. His tentacles were painted using very thin glazes of a reddish flesh tone and slowly working up the layers until I got the desired color and transition. I also tossed in a little bit of OSL to his orb for fun.


Overall I am super happy with both of these guys, but Sangalor is definitely my favorite of the pair. I was tempted to paint up the Beholder as well but since the deal was only for Halaster and Sangalor, I didn't. I might need to track down one of these kits for myself though. I'd love to use Sangalor as a Wizard in Frostgrave.